


with a little help

by orphan_account



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Character Death, F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-10
Updated: 2017-01-10
Packaged: 2018-09-16 15:55:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9278837
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Jongdae loves Liyin. Liyin loved Jongdae. But Liyin is gone and Jongdae has to learn how to live (and love) again.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So I originally wrote this for chenpionships awhile ago and posted it on my livejournal. I don't really write that much but I'm hoping to get in the practice more frequently. This first person POV isn't how I usually write, but I still hope you enjoy reading my first real fic!!

**February 10, 2014 - 3:42 a.m.**

It’s been a week since Liyin’s funeral. Nothing has gotten easier and I still can’t seem to function. I don’t eat or sleep. I lay in bed searching for the sleep that can make me forget, but I just keep thinking about her. Her smile, her laugh, her hair, her smell. These endless cycles of forgetting where I am because I don't have her next to me.

The bed is always so cold when I wake up alone.

I get tangled in the sheets and my memories, they drag me down until breaking through the surface is unimaginable. It’s suffocating, living but not being present. It’s only been a week but I don’t know how I’m going to continue without her. There’s just so much I have left to say to her, about her, for her. She had a blog so she made me one too. Maybe using this will help. Maybe it won’t. I just know that I can’t continue living like this.

There’s this emptiness inside of me that she filled and I’m scrambling through life trying to find my footing again.

 

**February 10, 2014 - 9:27 a.m.**

About 3 months before I proposed to her she came to me in tears. We had already been together for two years, plenty of time to get to know each other’s ins and outs. To this day I don’t understand why she was so panicked. She thought she was pregnant and she was terrified. I guess it was my fault, I didn’t make her feel loved enough, safe enough. She thought I was going to leave at the thought of a child. I was surprised, definitely, but I was also elated. Having a child with the woman I love would’ve been perfect. We were young, probably too young at the time, but I know we would’ve made it work.

Our child would’ve had her personality and my cheekbones. Liyin would’ve completely re-designed the whole apartment. I can see it now. The transition from warm tones to soft pastels, from higher end fabric and brands to simpler furniture that can easily be stained. Liyin was prone to doing that; changing the entire look of the apartment in a day. I would come home and the couch would be in a different room and we would no longer own a television. 

I can also imagine the nursery, but the theme wouldn’t be a generic jungle room. It would be amazing, something like space or an island in the middle of nowhere. The crib would be a space ship and our baby would be the astronaut heading out to explore the unknown, the room filled with stars. And we wouldn’t want to know the baby’s sex until birth. It would be more fun that way.

Why didn’t I tell her that day about these dreams? I guess I was scared, but now all I have are regrets. I miss her and I miss what could’ve been.

 

**February 16, 2014 - 2:45**

I tried to go to the gym with Minseok yesterday. I’m trying to keep up with my old schedule. It was nice to see his face, but all the energy it took to stay active with him was bordering on too much. I left 45 minutes earlier than I normally do. 

 

**February 28, 2014 - 12:00 a.m.**

Her birthday.

 

**March 3, 2014 - 12:00 a.m.**

One month.

 

**March 13, 2014 - 11:52 p.m.**

I walk past these stairs everyday on my way to work, and every night on my way home. They’re average industrial stairs for a walking overpass. Gray and uninviting, they are speckled with trodden down gum and other stains that will never erode. At night they have a green light leading up to them. At first I thought the light was just a reflection of the stoplight at the intersection nearby, but the color never changed to red or yellow, it always stayed an eery green. Then I realized the light came from the top, and just looking up a little more would’ve answered the question instead of just assuming.

I just feel like these stairs are supposed to mean something. Or maybe it’s because they’re right next to the funeral hall.

 

**March 27, 2014 - 9:00 p.m.**

Everyone is so concerned about me because instead of constantly crying I keep making dead wife jokes. 

Baekhyun thinks I need to see a shrink. His exact words were, “Jongdae stop being a sick fuck and cry. Get some help, but get it out.” Thanks bro. 

He knows why I do it though, he knows that I can’t handle the reality that she’s gone and that joking about it distances the pain. He knows because he’s been there before, losing people you love and resisting the crushing weight that loneliness brings. 

 

**April 4, 2014 - 7:15 a.m.**

Her family invited me to a gathering next week. It’s always interesting when I go to see them because communication between us is tentative at best, my Mandarin isn’t as good as it could be and their Korean is almost nonexistent. I’m still a part of the family I suppose, even though the only tie connecting me is gone. It’s slightly surprising considering that I know her father didn’t particularly care for me. Maybe it’s just because her mother loved me.

 

**April 10, 2014 - 8:43 p.m.**

Her mother was exceedingly pleasant, like always, and I finally met Yixing, her favorite cousin. He hasn't been here for very long so he asked me to show him around sometime. Liyin’s father was more accepting than usual, it must be because my wife died.

 

**May 15, 2014**

Watching her dance was one of my favorite things. She was so goofy, sometimes I would walk in from work to see her home early trying to cook dinner. She would spin in circles and do this weird flailing thing that made her look like a squid with no control. Sometimes she would spot me right away and drag me to join her (and we would almost accidentally destroy the house) and other times she was so lost in this awkward jive she wouldn’t see me for a couple minutes. Those were my favorite, just to see her lost and not thinking about work or the future.

However those nights were pretty rare, in reality Liyin was the breadwinner and usually I would come home hours before her to make dinner for us. Designing was something she not only excelled in, but also enjoyed. Taking a room and flipping it upside down, changing a dull interior into a space that had the potential for joy and love was what truly excited her. Even though she worked primarily for businesses she really thought she was making a difference in the lives of the employees stuck working in the office buildings. Her belief was evident through how hard she worked.

 

**May 17, 2014 - 6:23 p.m.**

Liyin’s mother wants me to hang out with Liyin’s cousin more often. I haven’t seen him since we were first introduced but he seemed rather pleasant. Liyin and Yixing were really close growing up. She would tell me stories about her childhood, about how they would always fool around in their neighborhood.

Apparently she was one of those weird kids that would collect bugs in jars and observe them until she set them free again. Yixing was her partner in crime. Liyin would be the bold one catching the bugs in the first place and Yixing would tell her when it was time to release them, and he would also do the releasing because she was scared she angered the bugs while they were in captivity. She told me she admired his bravery. Sometimes they had wasps or bees or spiders with unknown qualities, but Yixing never bat an eye at returning the agitated insect to it’s home.

“He was always so right.” She would tell me, and then she would chuckle and say, “until he went left.”

 

 **May 20, 2014 - 6:00**  
Work was rough, I forgot to review a client’s file before a meeting and looked like a fool in front of the board members and the client that was planning on joining us. I hope we don’t lose this client because of my stupidity. I think that Chanyeol was smoothing things over as I left though. Jongin keeps looking at me with these sad puppy eyes and it’s really not helping me get my mind in the right place. I just wish we could all pretend everything was okay.

 

**May 24, 2014 - 11:47 p.m.**

Liyin and I met when we both had shitty jobs at the same shitty restaurant. We were slaves to the capitalist system and it was the most depressing summer of my life. I was a dish boy and she was a server. Front of the house and back of the kitchen. I don’t even know how we spent enough time together to start talking in the first place. A real princess and the pauper story. Fairy tale in real life. Too bad we didn’t get our happily ever after.

All she did was scrape off the plates and put them in the pile, I would take the plates, rinse them, put them in the machine and put them on the rack. Liyin stood out because not only was she beautiful, but she also always said thank you. Being a dish washer in crappy restaurant chains sucks, and it sucks even more when no one realizes how much you bust your ass to make sure there are clean dishes stocked. Out of the whole restaurant she was the only one that acknowledged me. Maybe it was love at first sight. Or maybe she was blind.

It seems only appropriate that the whole time at work she would make jokes about the disgusting set up of the restaurant. The gaudy Hollywood signs and fake guitars that covered the walls were never her style. Neither were the plastic red booths with silver lining. She dreamed of fall tones, burgundy chair cushions with walnut stained tables. She dreamed of clean, yet welcoming, not the fake smiles plastered to employee’s faces to hide the minimal cleaning that went on behind the counter. Maybe the insincere facade was just to distract the customers from the sub-par food they were ingesting.

 

**June 9, 2014 - 3:00 p.m.**

Baekhyun came over yesterday and forced me out of the house. He mentioned something about “staring at a house created by Liyin wasn’t going to help me move on without her.” I always shit on Baekhyun for being an ass, but he’s actually not that horrible of a friend.

He brought me to our favorite minibar, it’s really small and inmate, only about ten people can fit inside. There are a bunch of posters on the wall from the sixties and it always smells like incense. None of the chairs match, and the bench on the far wall is made from a plank of wood with a cushion on top, wrapped in fabric. The bartender is our friend Luhan and he always has some story from “way back when” even though he’s only a couple years older than us. He acts like the two years it took for us to be born actually creates distance between our life experiences.

Although I love that they thought I needed a “bro night out” I also didn’t really need Vinyl, where there’s always the soft sound of The Beatles in the background, but way too much space to think. Luhan and Baek were good distractions, with Baekhyun’s nasally laugh and Luhan’s obsession with always having the attention on him. It was nice to see Minseok again, a good reminder to get my ass back to the gym. But Vinyl just has this atmosphere that is easy to get lost in. I felt myself stumbling through my thoughts of Liyin. 

But then Luhan called out and told me he had a surprise for me. Which was strange because honestly you never want Luhan to surprise you, you might end up with rainbow hair like poor little Sehun. 

It turns out Luhan is really close to Yixing, they both met in college and magically ended up in Seoul. Yixing reached out to Luhan when he first got here for help with his Korean. 

Yixing came and sat next to me. We talked but none of it was about Liyin. Instead we started talking about music. I opened up to him about how when I was younger and all I wanted to do with my life was sing. I didn’t want to be famous or anything, I just wanted to live my life singing beautiful songs for people to enjoy. 

Yixing’s eyes lit up when I told him about my singing. He asked me if I would be willing to actually listen to Liyin’s mom and hang out sometime to talk music. 

I told him that would be great. 

 

**June 11, 2014 - 1:02 a.m.**

I think the hardest part is how quiet it is in the house now. I no longer stumble across her humming while doing dishes or blasting horrible pop music in the shower. Even when she came home from work after me she would always tell me about her day in her soothing voice. I saw colors in her voice. She would sing a little tune and suddenly the air was more vibrant. She would tell me a story and I would be hypnotized by the way she created words from letters and how she conjured up so many beautiful experiences with just sound.

 

**July 17, 2014 - 4:30 p.m.**

I met with Yixing a few days ago. When I walked into the cafe he was siting on a white window sill looking out over the passerby's below. His red shirt was vibrant in the soft mid-afternoon light and he had an almost angelic aura surrounding him. His black hair subdued the spirited brightness that was almost overwhelming. We ordered too expensive coffee and chatted, still next to that same window and when we left we walked around the park.

In the park he pointed out his favorite tree. He told me it was his favorite tree because it wouldn't leave him alone. The first time he stumbled across it he literally stumbled because of the roots overtaking the walkway. He chuckled when he fell because it reminded him of when he was a kid and didn’t have any balance. 

Balance is a funny thing. It’s necessary to walk and ride bikes but you also need it to figure out how to handle stress and money. “Balance,” he said to me, “is what you need. Trees bend in the wind, they sway and contort themselves because they know if they didn’t they would just snap when the wind howled too strong.”

 

**July 29, 2014 - 10:42 p.m.**

I told Yixing about how I can’t handle the silence. I told him about being in the house and forgetting where I am because the background to music in my life has disappeared. He looked thoughtful for a moment before turning to me with the most serious expression I have ever seen on his face. He told me, “If you’re caught in this web of silence, you need to break through it with your own music.”

I just kind of… looked at him. He told me about how when he was traveling alone through China before he went to college he felt so lonely sometimes he forgot how to speak. He would assume he was talking out loud because his voice in his head was so deafening. 

Until he remembered how much he loved making his own music. He picked up a guitar on his travels and started playing again. He had stopped in high school because he needed a job and didn’t have enough time or money to put his faith in music.

But this trip reminded him of his passion, and he hasn’t looked back since.

 

**September 20, 2014 - 10:27 a.m.**

I invited Yixing to the gym with Minseok and me yesterday and I finally stayed for my full workout. It felt so good to actually do something productive. My muscles were screaming by the end of the night but they were definitely happy. I have so much work to make up on. I can definitely tell I’m not as in shape as I was before. Yixing decided that we should try and see who could lift more. With Minseok it’s never a competition, just companionship. But, with Yixing, it’s a completely different story.

Just like when we make music together, he’s always trying to be the fastest, the strongest, the most brilliant. It was shocking to see how much he could keep up with us. I guess his friendly dimple had me underestimating him.

 

**October 4, 2014 - 9:25 p.m.**

I’m so disappointed with myself, I can’t even stay consistent with updating this blog.

 

**November 9, 2014 - 7:39 p.m.**

Yixing came over to the house today, but he didn’t stay for very long. He entered the house and looked around silently. We had planned on just hanging out and writing some songs, singing together like usual. Slowly he looked at the family room, he picked up each individual pale green throw pillow Liyin picked out, then he slowly made his way to the kitchen, taking in the stainless steel appliances and the hand painted morocco border tiles. As he shuffled through the house I followed silently, his face became more severe with each step. It was hard to witness how downcast he became until he finally broke in the bedroom. Liyin had picked out an all white bed frame with white sheets, but a bold amaranth comforter and accent pillows. The adjacent walls were bookshelves with all of our favorite novels and directly behind the bed was a picture of a walkway in fall with falling leaves surrounding it. 

Yixing turned to me and told me that all of it was her dream. His eyes were dewy and his jaw was tight. He quickly thanked me for the invitation and told me he was suddenly feeling ill. Before I had the chance to ask him what was wrong he disappeared out the front door again. 

Yixing is just so strong all the time so occasionally I forget that I didn’t just lose a wife, he also lost a cousin. He looked so distraught and I want to be there for him like he was there for me so many times before but I just don’t know what to do.

 

**November 14, 2014 - 10:07**

I went to Yixing with a song I wrote, hoping it would cheer him up. It was about all the balancing he taught me about, like the good and the bad that exists together along with the uncontrollable aspects of the world we live in. It was basically just me thanking him for helping me so much when I had done so little in return. 

Yixing really is an amazing man.

 

**December 27, 2014 - 7:24 p.m.**

I met Yixing’s…. friend? the other day. His name is Joonmyun. It was odd because they were acting like they were… more than friends at some point in time. It’s not my place. I shouldn’t care.

 

**December 27, 2014 - 9:48 p.m.**

But I do care. It’s impossible not to. Not with the way Joonmyun looked at Yixing like the stars came out of his ass. Not with the way Yixing smiled back. That smile he used with Joonmyun, that was supposed to be just for me. 

 

**December 28, 2014 - 4:44 p.m.**

I’m such a moron.

 

**January 7, 2015 - 7:07 a.m.**

She just loved her job. That’s what she was doing that night, working too late like always. That morning I kissed her goodbye on my way to work and told her I would have dinner ready for us. She smiled and slapped my butt when I walked away and told me to be careful on my way to the office. I laughed and told her I was invincible. 

A few weeks before that night we had gotten into an argument about how much she works. I told her I wanted her to give herself a break. The constant hours at work were definitely wearing on her, she would come home later and later. Her spark was just as bright, but it wasn't as much for me. I was being selfish but I missed my wife. I was tired of the loneliness.

She promised she would start coming home earlier, but since she was in the middle of a project it wouldn't be immediate. 

Her company was renovating an older building as offices for a company that was growing exponentially. She was working on plans for the layout and all the accommodations the company wanted just weren't working. It was so cold in February and they left the heaters on. Her intern got a headache first and Liyin sent her home, but Liyin stayed, just for a little longer, too much longer. The inspections had already been done, there was no reason for her to have died. Except the new heating system didn’t work properly and the carbon monoxide was too much. I should’ve told her to come home. It shouldn't have happened. But it did. And now she can never come back home.

But her inability to reenter the house she loved so much doesn’t stop me from continuing to enter and exit as I please. Losing her doesn’t mean that I am also lost, it just means that I had to reevaluate who I am. And I think that maybe one day, I’ll be okay again.


End file.
